[Sks-devel] New development version of sks (bigint replaces numerix)

[Yaron Minsky]

I've created a branch of sks for eliminating numerix and replacing it
with the ocaml-native bigint package.  bigint is implemented in pure
ocaml, and while it's less efficient on x86 then Numerix, it's a hell
of a lot more portable.

Anyway, the branch is called sks-bignum--mainline--1.0, and the
archive is can be found here:

http://minsky-primus.homeip.net/archives/2004/

It's a signed archive, so you can use gpg to verify the repository if
you choose.

Tla is pretty easy to install on your favorite *nix.  Here's where you
can get it:

http://www.gnuarch.org/arch-download.html

The build process is fairly straightforward.  Get version 1.2.  Once
you have it built and installed, you can do the following (obviously
with a different user-id) to get the latest version of sks-bigint.

tla my-id "Test Ing User <address@hidden>"
tla register-archive "http://minsky-primus.homeip.net/archives/2004";
tla my-default-archive address@hidden
tla get sks-bigint--mainline--1.0

You can make local modifications, and type "tla update" to get
up-to-date with the mainline.  You can also fork your own version on
which you can make changes which I can then merge in, but that takes a
little bit more setup...

y